WhatsApp in the World: Disinformation, Encryption and Extreme Speech

How is WhatsApp, the most popular instant messaging platform, mediating the spread of extreme speech in different contexts of the world? What does a global view of the actual practices around this popular medium say about the promise of “encryption” as a technological feature?

BKC is pleased to welcome Fellow and LMU professor Sahana Udupa to discuss the forthcoming edited volume WhatsApp in the World: Disinformation, Encryption and Extreme Speech with Faculty Associate and Harvard professor Gabriella Coleman.

The talk will present the key concept of the book — “lived encryptions” — to argue that encryption as a technological feature cannot be taken at its face value or as a central piece of the affordance as it is experienced; rather, it embeds different, often contradictory social and political formations. This is evidenced in the way the promised confidentiality of encryption is upturned completely when phones are seized to inspect the data, and how seemingly closed group communication thick with social trust and familial bonding is channelized to “broadcast” top-down political messages. Exploring such contradictions in multiple settings, this talk will venture into theorizing extreme speech from the vantage of encrypted messaging.